Microcomputer Spreadsheet Applications

The introduction of inexpensive microcomputer hardware and innovative user‐oriented software packages has had a significant impact on the traditional data processing procedures of the construction industry. Copyrighted electronic spreadsheet packages such as VisiCalc and SuperCalc are now available to practically all microcomputer users. These spreadsheet packages provide construction contractors, owners and managers with a versatile management tool that can be applied to a wide range of construction‐related problems. The overall capabilities of spreadsheet packages are examined and specific applications of interest to the construction management community are presented.     

The effect of an infusion of low molecular weight dextran on peripheral resistance in patients with arteriosclerosis

Low molecular weight dextran is frequently given to improve the flow of blood to the periphery, but its mode of action is uncertain. We measured the effect of an infusion of 500 ml of Dextran 40 on the peripheral resistance in 12 patients undergoing reconstructive surgery for atherosclerotic occlusion of the superficial femoral artery. After the infusion, values of packed cell volume and blood viscosity indicated haemodilution. There was a consistent increase in mean flow and a fall in peripheral resistance. There was no correlation between change in viscosity and change in peripheral resistance, but there was a good correlation between the percentage change in resistance and the initial resistance. This suggests that the increase in flow of blood was due to reflex vasodilatation rather than to any reduction in viscosity.     

Taxing health.

Discusses a federal proposal that would limit the amount of health insurance an employer could provide tax free to employees. This could lead to the elimination of cost-effective health benefits such as mental health coverage, drug and alcohol abuse programs, and other preventive care services. The proposal threatens health security and is unlikely to provide additional tax revenues for the government. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stability of particle flocs upon addition of natural organic matter under quiescent conditions

In this research, the influence of two natural organic polymers (polysaccharide and humic acid) on the stability of colloidal aggregates was examined. The primary objective of this research was to determine whether addition of organic matter to floc suspensions results in the fragmentation or stabilization of aggregates. A second objective was to determine how the size of aggregates and the composition of organic matter influence the floc breakup or stabilization process. It was found that the stability of aggregates depended on the type of organic material present as well as floc size. For example, humic acid increased the stability of aggregates more effectively than polysaccharides of larger size. It was also found that the addition of humic acid or polysaccharide generally decreased the rate of coagulation of small aggregates but had less influence on large aggregates. In no case did the addition of polysaccharide or humic acid result in the fragmentation of particle aggregates. The existence of strong interparticle forces within flocs prevented aggregate breakup upon adsorption of natural organic polymers. The results presented here provide important new information regarding the influence of NOM on the behavior of particles in aquatic systems.     

Discovering stages in web navigation for problem-oriented navigation support

Users of web sites often do not know exactly which information they are looking for nor what the site has to offer. The purpose of their interaction is not only to fulfill but also to articulate their information needs. In these cases users need to pass through a series of pages before they can use the information that will eventually answer their questions. Current systems that support navigation predict which pages are interesting for the users on the basis of commonalities in the contents or the usage of the pages. They do not take into account the order in which the pages must be visited. In this paper we propose a method to automatically divide the pages of a web site on the basis of user logs into sets of pages that correspond to navigation stages. The method searches for an optimal number of stages and assigns each page to a stage. The stages can be used in combination with the pages’ topics to give better recommendations or to structure or adapt the site. The resulting navigation structures guide the users step by step through the site providing pages that do not only match the topic of the user’s search, but also the current stage of the navigation process.     

Classification accuracy is not enough

We argue that an evaluation of system behavior at the level of the music is required to usefully address the fundamental problems of music genre recognition (MGR), and indeed other tasks of music information retrieval, such as autotagging. A recent review of works in MGR since 1995 shows that most (82 %) measure the capacity of a system to recognize genre by its classification accuracy. After reviewing evaluation in MGR, we show that neither classification accuracy, nor recall and precision, nor confusion tables, necessarily reflect the capacity of a system to recognize genre in musical signals. Hence, such figures of merit cannot be used to reliably rank, promote or discount the genre recognition performance of MGR systems if genre recognition (rather than identification by irrelevant confounding factors) is the objective. This motivates the development of a richer experimental toolbox for evaluating any system designed to intelligently extract information from music signals.